IBM is set to ship its first Power9 system this month, claiming AI leadership in the data center

With the release this month of the first commercial server based on its Power9 processor, IBM is reaching another milestone in its quest to be the AI-workload leader for data centers and web service providers.The Power9 chips in the systems hitting ...

With the release this month of the first commercial server based on its Power9 processor, IBM is reaching another milestone in its quest to be the AI-workload leader for data centers and web service providers.

The Power9 chips in the systems hitting the market now don't rev up to the top speeds provided by Intel's Xeon Scalable Processor line, but they offer blazing throughput aimed to give them an edge in machine learning and accelerated database applications.

IBM unveiled its first Power9 server, the Power System AC922, Tuesday at the AI Summit in New York. It runs a version of the Power9 chip tuned for Linux, with the four-way multithreading variant SMT4. Power9 chips with SMT4 can offer up to 24 cores, though the chips in the AC922 top out at 22 cores. The fastest Power9 in the AC922 runs at 3.3GHz.